Deer have basically eaten all the greenery from my cedars and left broken branches. Is there any chance they will regrow?
There is a point of no return with cedars. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that there is a point of diminishing returns. Once deer have eaten their way through all - or the majority - of the greenery on your cedars, the plants are pretty much toast.
It's not impossible for some of the leaves to grow back. In fact, it's very likely you'll likely get some tufts of growth here and there, if you pray hard enough. But your cedars will never again look like the perfect little pyramids you planted and will likely never be anything more than a dreary reminder that deer have voracious appetites.
My advice? Pull them out and plant something else in that location. Upright junipers are the usual subsitute for cedars in a situation like this because they achieve a similar effect and deer can't stand the taste of them. There are some drawbacks to replacing your cedars with junipers. Top of the list has to be that junipers are much slower growing. They are also less tolerant of moisture, which is a blessing if you want to keep your watering to a minimum and a curse if your yard is one step short of a marsh.
The one mistake gardeners often make is to be bullheaded, insisting on replanting the cedars in the hopes that this time the deer won't eat them. They will. The only way to prevent them from doing this is to surround your cedars with wire cages that the deer can't poke their noses through. That's almost as much of an eyesore as the chewed down version of the plants you have now and surely not the effect you were going for when you chose to plant the cedars in the first place.
It's always better to work with nature than to try and bend it to your will. In this case, nature wants to eat your cedars, so you have little choice but to shrug your shoulders and move on to something else.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
Posted July 15, 2011.
